The end of the eviction moratorium will create mass homelessness in the United States, and as usual, the politicians in America could care less about the millions of Americans that will soon be thrown out of their homes and onto the streets. This problem is a direct result of State and municipal government politicians banning people from working and earning an income for the past 18-months of lockdown, during which millions of Americans fell behind on their rent, but were saved by a declared eviction moratorium during the lockdown periods. However, with the end of the eviction moratorium declared this past weekend, the story is the same across the marginalized and disenfranchised American population in dozens of cities – millions of people are worried about becoming homeless in the next few weeks, including millions of families that neither deserve to be booted on the streets or deserved to have their financial livelihood stripped from them during these past 18 months.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, 35,000 residents that have missed their regular paychecks for the past 18-months stated that they could not miss one paycheck without falling behind on their rent, which likely means 35,000 residents of Tulsa will become homeless, a reprehensible outcome given that governments robbed people of the means to earn a living during the lockdowns. Before the rent moratorium happened, a single mother of four stated, “I was going to live in my van. I had nowhere for me and my four kids to go.” Now that the moratorium has ended, she is almost guaranteed to be banned to living in her van with her children.
Of course, landlords have also suffered tremendously during these lockdowns as well, as many have not been able to pay their mortgages because of receiving no rent from their tenants for a long protracted period of time. Again, this is the fault of hateful politicians that care nothing for their constituents, as in these times of suffering and hardship, I am not pro-renter, anti-landlord. I am pro-renter and pro-landlord. Politicians, and even your favorite ones, have immorally and heartlessly abandoned both sides of this awful problem in this time of immense suffering. They provide a lot of lip service but never any real helpful action and when those that want to hold politicians’ feet to the fire and make them accountable for their issued empty promises, they simple tuck tail and run, closing down their offices to avoid any accountability. If politicians’ “solution” to the virus is to rob people of their ability to earn income, then they must replace 100% of their regular income, not 1% of it, or 10% of it, for the whole time they are robbing people of an ability to earn income, and the fact that they are now willfully kicking people out of their homes is morally despicable. Instead of the immunized yelling at the non-immunized in misplaced moral rage, they should focus their rage on people that really deserve it – their local politicians that have done nothing to help out their constituents that need the most help.
In Los Angeles, at the start of 2020, there were 66,000 homeless. The 2021 census of homeless in LA was cancelled due to virus inspired lockdowns, but it would not be beyond belief to estimate that in 2020 and 2021, an additional 14,000 were added to the homeless roll in LA to bring the total 2020 starting number up to 80,000. And with the eviction moratorium ending, a further estimate of 20,000 more homeless in a city as big as Los Angeles is probably idealistically optimistic. Still, these minimal estimates would bring the total number of homeless in LA up to six figures, and over 100,000 people, a completely reprehensible figure.
But across America, the end of the eviction moratorium will hit the populations of poor Americans the hardest, as the people that live paycheck to paycheck will be the first to find themselves dumped on the curb, left to starve by the politicians that care nothing for them. If we look at the above map of States with the largest percent of renters behind on rent payments, we see that Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and New York lead the way, respectively with 29%, 24%, 28% and 21% of renters behind on payments at the time the eviction moratorium ended this past weekend. The fact that New York ranks as one of the top four states with mass eviction problems may come as a surprise, but it is easy to understand once you realize that New York City is one of the most expensive rental property markets in the entire country.
Consequently, I would imagine that the bulk of the 21% of renters that are behind on payments in the state of New York live in the five boroughs of New York City and this is a problem fairly concentrated in one city in the State. However, in South Carolina, in all but four counties in the entire state, more than 1 in 4 renters were behind on their rent payments, and in Mississippi and Georgie, more than half of the counties in each of these states contained more than 1 in 4 renters behind on their payments. If you live in New Jersey and New Mexico, and are behind on your rent payments, you’re in luck because the eviction moratorium will not end for New Jersey residents until January 2022 and in New Mexico, the Supreme Court indefinitely suspended rental evictions for tenants behind on their payments. However, this does not help landlords in these states, that are also struggling to make ends meet due to the enforced eviction moratoriums. No politicians, even though they are directly responsible for destroying the rental income streams of landlords all across America, have offered any rental payment relief to landlords to help them survive ongoing lockdowns to make up for their massive loss of income. So, as usual, if politicians offer help to one constituency, in the process they destroy another part of their constituency.
Finally, in a shocking statistic representative of a banana republic that should never exist in a developed nation that exemplifies the degenerative economic state of a nation, the Nation’s Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual “Out of Reach” report concluded that in 2021, a full-time, minimum-wage earner in America, if budgeting the recommended 30% of income to rent to allow for other daily living expenses, was unable to afford a fair-market, one-bedroom apartment in 95% of all counties in the entire United States of America. In fact, just to earn enough income to afford the monthly rent payment for an average one or two-bedroom apartment, a minimum-wage American worker would have to respectively work nearly 80 and 100 hours per week. So, in reality, un-American companies like Blackrock that have been destroying the American dream of home ownership for years had already been creating a housing crisis for millions of Americans. The lockdowns only amplified the road to serfdom in America for millions. In the end, none of the offered solutions by politicians are acceptable, as they are all band-aids to people with severed carotid arteries that are rapidly bleeding out. Unfortunately, mass homelessness will mean mass desperation, and an explosion of crime in areas in which politicians left their constituents to bleed out in the streets.
